Gone Fishin'

I was three days into my trip to Jamaica when I realized I hadn't told you guys I was going away. Bad blogger!

Anyway, I'm back now from my week in paradise, watching the rainy snow come down out my window. It was great. I even wrote! On vacation! And I ate, of course, and there may have been some drinking, and I met real live Republicans from the U. S. of A. (college professors!) who thought Sarah Palin was "educated and extremely well-spoken." Yes, we backed quietly out of those waters and back into "hope it doesn't rain" country.

I read a lot, but unfortunately most of it was sort of meh.

The Heir and the Spare by Maya Rodale: This is a sweet, well-written debut, about two twins (yes, twins - does anyone still buy this rickety plot device?) and the woman who gets caught between them, complete with switched identities and all that. I got tired when the hero started talking like this:

"You will stay away from her," Devon said in a lethal tone.
"Never learned to respect your elders, did you?" Phillip sneered.
"I grant my respect to those who deserve it for merits other than age; merits that you are sadly lacking."

Oh yay, a hero who talks like a cross between a grade three teacher and that grandma you never liked. Sexxy!

Also, there's a character who comes back from the dead, and beside showing a few characters as mildly surprised, it's glossed over. Other than that, I did like this book, and I think I'll still try her next one.

Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh: Everyone likes these books, and I have to admit, my so-so reaction is likely my fault. I've yet to find a paranormal romance that really does it for me, and yes, I've tried and tried - it just isn't my genre. I'm also one of the few women in existence, apparently, who just doesn't get alpha heroes.

He's big and strong and protective and all that, I suppose. But when the alpha starts doing dumb things and getting into dumb arguments to "protect his mate" - repeatedly - I get bored. To have his mate in pain "nearly breaks" him. Really? Look, dude, appreciate your concern, but we're women. We can take a little pain. I think that's my problem with alphas - they rarely trust their women to do anything alone, handle any problems, or deal with any physical discomfort. A woman wants to be cared for, not repeatedly embarrassed.

I write beta heroes, and I think I always will. I love me a good beta hero.

The Wicked Ways of a Duke by Laura Lee Guhrke: I couldn't even finish this one, which is a shock considering her And Then He Kissed Her was one of my favourites from last year. I realize from the foreshadowing that the hero had Some Serious Issues, but unfortunately his torturedness translated to being, repeatedly, a simple asshat.

Let's see. Bedding lower-class women who have fewer options than him, sneering at his mother about his brother's suicide, drinking, sponging off friends, and repeatedly lying to and manipulating the heroine so he can marry her money - he may be Tortured, but after 150 pages so was I. There are a lot of asshat heroes in romance, but it will be hard to top this one.

Oh, and the stepback, in which it appears that an attractive lady is offering herself to a cast member from Planet of the Apes, is truly horrid.

After all this, I need to cleanse my palate with some really good, smart books. Luckily my TBR has exploded (I really don't see what all these publishers are afraid of - it seems I will carry the entire industry single-handed.) Time to dive back in and come up with a few more.

What are you reading?

Abby

Books

Though I did not sign up for NaNo, it just so happens that I have been busy writing. I've done twenty-five pages in the past week-plus, some kind of record for me.

The muse, when she talks, doesn't like being ignored.

I've also been reading, though as of late my reading has been sort of meh.

Mine Until Midnight by Lisa Kleypas - Since the sequel to this just came out, I decided to play catch-up by reading the first one. It's the story of Cam Rohan, the Gypsy secondary character from a couple of past books, and Amelia, a put-upon proper English spinster trying to keep her family together.

My main problem with this book was that I just didn't get much sense of Amelia, or why Cam would find her all that extraordinary. She seemed nice enough. But really, being poor and worried does not a heroine make. I had the feeling Kleypas herself wasn't too interested either, judging by the number of scenes the siblings got, their separate character arcs, and the relatively few scenes that featured just Cam and Amelia together (other than sex, of course. Whew, the sex scenes in this book are like 7 pages long. I was tired.)

Cam is drawn a little better, though he had some vague spots. The villain could have been cut entirely and nothing would be missing. Hello, WTF with that tree stump scene? And hello, WTF with the bees? Bees? Really?

Still, even when Kleypas sort of phones it in, she phones in a pretty good book. I took this one to the dentist's waiting room, and when they finally called me I looked up wondering where I was. I'll still read Kleypas, starting with the ballyhooed sequel to this one, about the family gypsy of unknown origins and the daughter of the house (no plots lifted from Wuthering Heights or anything - no, really!)

Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson - Speaking of ballyhoo, it's taken me a long time to get around to reading this series. I'm not big on fantasy romance, purely for the fact that until George R. R. Martin finishes his damn series!!!1 there is no other fantasy writer in my world. Still, this one got enough buzz that I picked it up.

Props to the well-developed and imaginative world here - I don't write fantasy, because there's no way in a hundred years I could come up with all the stuff that's needed, like currency, units of time, political alliances and enmeties, and smatterings of language. Also, props to avoiding many fantasy cliches. There are no elves, orcs, trolls, or other Tolkieny things in sight.

Wilson's world is much fresher, and it has a believable internal logic holding it together. (Actually, I think this is her debut - wow.) But again, it was the characterization that bored me a little. Rain, the hero, is actually a sort of god, or nearly so. He is just So Beautiful, So Powerful, So Strong, So Terrifying, So Wise. He also spent much time - this is a pet peeve of mine and the reason I've only read one Stephanie Laurens book - picking up the heroine, whisking her away from danger, grabbing her, shielding her from danger, moving her here and there, as if she were some kind of luggage.

And then Rain's arms were around her, sweeping her out of her chair and against his chest, and air blew in a cooling rush against her hot skin as he sped up the stairs and out of the palace...

He does this frequently. I would go nuts.

Ellie, the heroine, is a sort of Everygirl - shy, a little awkward, not very confident, a bit of a misfit. Rain sees her and Decides She Is His Soul Mate For Eternity. It's a fantasy, after all.

There are a few more books in this series, and at this point I'm on the fence. The heavy political conversations in the last 70 pages really bogged me down - talk about infodump. I'm not sure I can keep it all straight, and as the whisking promises to continue unabated, I may not try. There are too many other books in the TBR.

Go, NaNos

So, what do you do when you go to your first conference and you get a request from a really good agent? And then you get home and look at your pages and panic and think of about 100 things you could do better, and you start imagining said agent getting your pages and saying, "What was I thinking? Time to get out the form reply. I'll never go to that conference again, it's full of people who can't write. New Jersey isn't even warm."

You revise, that's what you do.

Oh, and you email your critique partner, stat, and hope she isn't too busy. (She's always busy, but she is also awesome.)

You also get out your craft books and refer to them. That's why you bought them. Also, the bits of research in those pages you weren't 100% sure about? You double check them. You take another look to make sure you don't have flabby sentences and repeated words, even though you've done this already, and so has your CP. When you're on the subway, you listen to the 2008 Nationals MP3's to stay in the writing mindset. You take your lunch hours at the day job and you read and sketch plots.

You try to have a life, because you have a family wedding to go to and the tub doesn't clean itself (this is unfortunate, but I have found it to be true.)

At some point you panic and have a glass of wine.

But you don't blog a lot.

NaNoWriMo starts today - good luck, you guys! I'll be cheering for you.

And to everyone I met at the New Jersey conference - it was great to see you all! I'm already thinking about next year.

Must get back,
Abby